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Psychology of Missing Someone

I have been really interested in knowing, what makes a person miss the other person? How do we miss this person? Why do we miss this person? Or anyone in fact? I have been thinking about this from the morning. Even when I was in the shower. Usually when I am in the shower, I get weird epiphanies or revelations regarding various topics, or I see or think about things which actually do come true. I have always wondered if I had some special ability and yes I do have a special ability.

It is the ability to observe and analyse. Two thinks very important for Psychologists but Photographers and Journalists a like. Some people might not observe about what's going on around them, some might but not analyse, some won't even do both. It's good to observe and analyse but not draw negative conclusions all the time. We have to analyse and draw conclusions without any biases and pre-made up thoughts about something in our minds. Some people analyse and look in to something way too much, when the matter is not even that deep. It's a simple clean cut matter and yet they make a mountain out of a molehill. I have one message for all of them who do this, stop reading too much in to things. That's when the trouble starts, especially them desi aunties who read too much in to things and then start gossiping and spreading rumours.

Anyway this was about missing someone. I have noticed, if you tell someone you are going to be away - for instance, away from the country you live in - or you tell them that you won't be in touch with them for some reason for a while, they will miss you more. I am sure this is not ALWAYS the case, especially if the person that you tell this to is not close to you, but if they are close to you, then they will miss you more if you tell them. This has a special psychological effect on the mind. If you won't tell them that you are going anywhere, even if it is just for a day, they might not even realise it or they might realise it late.

If you won't tell them that you won't be in touch with them for a day or two, they will just go about their daily routine, be busy and won't realise. People are so busy these days, some people have such hectic routines to actually stay in touch with anyone. IF you have planted it in their mind that you won't be in touch, then it surely will come in their thoughts and they will miss you.

Apart from that, even when a person is not going anywhere but for some reason or the other is not in touch with the person that they like to talk to, they miss them. WHY IS THAT? Why do we miss people? What makes us miss people that we like to talk to? What makes us miss people that have a special corner in our hearts? What makes us miss people that have become special for us? Is it because they are an important part of our lives now and the mind recognises that?

Is it not because they are important, but just because we talk to them so much, we miss "talking to them" and not actually "them". If we don't talk to them there is a void in our life and daily routine. We don't like them as a person, we just like talking to them. Maybe because of one or two of their qualities. So the people that we miss, are they our friends or just human beings that we get attached to and we miss them in our daily routine?

It's crazy when people don't even support their own ideas and thoughts. I for one, don't support any of the negative bullshit in here about missing someone. I am a die hard romantic and the person who has experienced what it feels like to be in love or miss someone. You don't have to be in love to miss someone but you can love missing someone. Even if they are away and you can't talk to them.

This still doesn't answers in a positive light, why we miss someone. All I have written is negativity, taking a person as a human being that we have gotten attached to. No that is not the case. Missing someone? What does that actually mean? It is when you remember something they had said, or something you had said to them. In extreme cases, even their picture comes to your mind. You can hear them in your mind as well, if you miss someone a lot. You miss talking to them, you miss their smile, you miss their laughter, you miss their smell, you miss every little thing they did or they do.

Now that is all for people you are missing, who live in the same town or area as you, and you get to see them often. What if you are missing someone online? Same dynamics, similar ball game, just a tad bit different. You don't have that animated features of the person to support your mind, missing them. Maybe the way they keep on running their fingers through their hair or something. At the most, online interaction can be very fake. Even if you see someone in a webcam sitting far away, the person would always try to be really presentable and will not necessarily act natural, unlike a person who you actually meet in a real life setting on a day to day basis. You won't miss the sigh sound of a person, for example who you interact with online, because most probably you had never heard their sigh before.

Missing someone who lives far from you, is more difficult and painful than missing someone who lives near you but is away, busy and that's why not in touch. This is why, in my humble opinion having long distance friends is all fun and nice, but it is difficult, especially if you get close to someone but you can't meet them. You miss them, you want to send them a birthday present and you do, but will you be actually present there to give it and meet them in real life? It doesn't always happen. Not all of us are blessed with the ability to travel so easily and have a jet setter lifestyle. Not always are we financially capable as well. This is why, all you can do is be friends with a person online - long distance - if they will allow you to be. What do I mean by allow you to be? For example, if they hardly tell you anything about them or their daily life, or even where they live or what they do, then you are missing out on huge chunks of their life. It is not even a complete friendship. It is just like two people come in front of their computers or mobile phones and talk to one another.

Now if they do tell you random details of their daily life and entrust you with knowledge about them, even though you both are long distance and will meet who knows when, then that person is allowing you to be friends with them and giving you a chance to enter their life. This is the kind of people you miss the most, when for some reason you don't get to talk to them in a day or for days, and this is the kind of people who hurt you the most too, if they stop talking to you.

I don't know how much psychology is in there, about missing someone, but these were just some of the random thoughts that were in my mind and I wanted to write them down. I hope I didn't bore you guys. Whoever are my silent readers.

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Comments

Thanks for the post :) I appreciate that you took your time to share your thoughts. Because I've come to find myself stuck in this whole 'missing' someone i havent even met, and just saw pictures of. I find myself insane to be like this, but my mind just goes back to same thoughts.

But im finding that time and experience is probably healing to what i think is a disease that im having. haa... but thank you for your post. nice insight!

I have been pondering this for a while... I am busy, have survived a lot, am pretty self aware...and then one day in a store bumped into someone, felt an incredible electric shock go through my body, and have missed this man ever since. Was it because he awakened me? If so, that hardly seems fair that I would not see him again... I miss him and have felt a grief. Why? Is there some part of me that is so desperate for a fantasy of a man that gave me a zing... seems so off.. yet it is so real.

My babys died about a month after we split up, I ended it, he had drink and drug problems and I felt I was more of a mother to him than a girlfriend, I still love him there is no doubt about that but I am happy in my new relationship but theres times when I will go silent this can be for days and all I think about is him and even though I hated the relationship sometimes I wish I coupd have it all back why?!!

yes i've started liking a guy , this is long distance and we chat over phone almost daily. he said he likes me too but the fact is nothing is working well between us from last few days coz he's going through a difficult time in searching job n all and most of the time he takes out anger n frustration on me n then apologises but this time he did'nt said sorry and i felt so bad that i said him i needed a break n i'l message you when i'll come back . its just the 4th day i'm missing to talk to him , i don't know whether he'l talk to me when i'l go back or not coz we had a fight when we talked last but one thing i know for sure that it will hurt me alot if he'l stop talking to me or may be he's missing me too , i don;t know.

Dear Sneha, long distance is really hard to maintain and take forward. Things get difficult and I know, since I've been in one too which ended. You get really hurt and you can't even do anything about it, since the person is most of the times, really far from you.

Do you really like the person to go through the hurt and crying every other day? Because let me assure you this will be the case. In long distance there will be a lot of fights and questions on trust etc. Issues like that. If you see yourself falling in love with this person and can tolerate this hurt, then go back to talking to him. Otherwise it is best to leave now. I know it will hurt, but you'll get over it.

Give it time and space, if he missed you and likes you, he will contact you. If he doesn't, contact him after a few days and you'll know your position in his life clearly.

I've been in a long distance relationship with a guy over webcam we use to talk all night i had so much fun just chatting with him until he started getting frustrated over stuff in his life and we broke up because we strted fighting alot and i miss him soo bad we dont even talk to each other anymore :(

I met a boy and I literally fell in love with him the only bad thing is he lives in the United Kingdom. We used to talk EVERYDAY then we had to stop talking. It hurts A LOT. I never cried so hard in my life. ='(

Thanks, your post really helped me. I think, I must take a shower too, just to realize all those possible answers on my own question. Same here as you do, I do it every time I take a bath. Thank you so much! God speed. :)

Although this post is over a year old, I would like to suggest a reason for why we miss people. I welcome criticism and comments towards my theories.

In order to explain why you may miss a friend or a loved one, I must first attempt to briefly explain why we value them in the first place.

Humans are very selfish creatures. In our pursuit of happiness, we create friends for a mutual benefit. To understand this, analyze certain friends and your motivation to talk to them. You may talk to your best friend for emotional support, your good friends for the entertainment they provide, or your significant other to satisfy your love and sexual needs. All of your friends provide you something you value, and you provide your friends with something they value. Friends that provide more are valued more, and they become our best friend or significant other. Thus, a friendship is formed.

Now that we've briefly established why friendships are made (as depressing and selfish as it sounds), the reason why we miss a person becomes more apparent.

As we lose the presence of our friends, we begin to lose the utilities they provide. We lose their entertainment, their support, their love.

We may miss a best friend or significant other more than we miss our acquaintances because of how much they are worth. With their absence, we lose a valuable source and we are left with a gaping hole that we are struggling to fill. Where will I get my love now?

So essentially, when we miss a person, we don't actually miss the person, but in fact we miss the assets they provide such as their support, knowledge, or love.

Comprehensive comment on why we miss someone, but you looked at it from purely a scientific/technical angle. You looked at it, with logic. When we miss someone, we don't look for logic. We rely on emotions. As human beings, we are taught to not miss what they may provide us, but THE PERSON(S). This is why, families stay intact for so many years and this is why people stay in love for so many years too.

If this was the case, that everyone started thinking of others not as a person, but as a commodity, then we would easily get bored of people and move on to other 'things'. But human beings aren't. We get emotionally attached to people and this is a scientific fact. We don't get attached to what they can provide us.

If that was the case, we wouldn't miss them when we didn't talk to one particular person. If we only missed talking to them because we were missing what they can provide. Not the person itself. But we do miss certain people. If that was the case, we can easily get entertainment from so many different things, as well as people to converse with etc. but why is it, that it is just not the same with others, as it is with one or two specific people? Or certain special people in our lives?

At the end of the day, it is the PERSON or PEOPLE that we miss. Because we are human beings. For entertainment, time pass etc. we have plenty of other things to keep us at bay, including watching movies.

Imo, Knowing about someone never ends, we are sometimes unaware that we discover/learn/know about that person more when were with them, you miss them because youre missing knowing the things we should have if youre together, even if you havent meet/talk to that person or youve seen only in a pic and sometimes you still miss someone even if youre together because you still want to know more and not being satisfied.In short you are missing alot about that someone and it transformed into a feeling called miss.I hope you get what i mean.

Hi!Well there's this guy that I really miss. He used to be my best friend and we mostly talked online since we went to different schools but we met at least once in 2 weeks-ish but we had a bit of a fall out in the past few months and he now just doesn't bother talking to me that much anymore which I feel is a bit strange because I don't know what went wrong. I met him today but it wasn't the same as what it used to be and now I can't stop thinking about how good we were a few months ago and therefore really really miss having him in my life.So I actually want to know what to do to make him miss me too. Should I just block him off online and ignore him face to face or should I have small talks whenever he bothers to start the conversation and not start it myself?I really want him to feel like he should at least make an attempt to be my friend again because he misses having me in his life

I miss my girl friend a lot... Cannot stop thinking of her. I rang her we talked we miss each other I think as she said the same. Her life style very busy working hard and hardly has holiday. When she's not reply text it's drive me insane ! I'm not sure if I should phone her or not... I'm scare

I believe that missing someone is having a telepathic and neurotic connections logic! I meant I found it several time that if you are missing someone it is in the case when the other person somehow also misses you!! be it directly or not, the time the missing factor goes down from any one of the partner it will surely vanish from the other mind too!! logically we never miss a person who hates us, we know or whom we hate!!

We miss others because we don't like being alone. I think one must learn to be alone. Learn the actually beauty of it. It's not like when one is able to be alone, that person doesn't care about people anymore. It's just that the person no longer "needs" them, although likes to spend time with them. I think when this neediness, this dependence is understood and seen as the illusion it really is, life gets a lot less painful and relationships get actually more meaningful, for the fear of rejection fades away.

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